The Stolen Hours: Time as a Racial Privilege

A conversation with Noella, my roommate for this weekend, shifted my perspective on time specifically how it is experienced differently by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. We discussed how BIPOC individuals often navigate the world with inherently less available time. This casual chat resonated deeply, as it articulated a truth I had lived with but never quite named.

Time here is a resource the dominant group collects. They often have “Others” handle things like childcare, cooking, driving, or laundry. The hours many BIPOC people spend performing these tasks for themselves and others are folded into what looks like leisure, self-care, and good taste. That lifestyle is actually a structural inheritance.

Isabel Wilkerson illustrates this disparity clearly in her book, Caste. In Chapter 23, she recounts an experience on a flight where, despite holding a first-class ticket and having every right to be there, a man made a loud, racist remark: "That's what happens when they let just anybody in first class." He then persistently challenged her right to recline her seat. Wilkerson wrote, "I went back and sat up straight, across the length of the country. The caste system had put me in my place." Consider the weight of that phrase: "Across the length of the country." She was denied rest, the use of the time she had paid for, the space she had earned, and the hours that were rightfully hers. The caste system reached into that cabin and stole her time, her sleep, her comfort, her stillness and replaced it with the exhausting labor of proving she deserved to exist where she sat. That is the mechanism. That is how it works. The interruption itself is the punishment.

This experience resonates with my own. I recall a similar incident, and though the specific details escape me, the feeling remains vivid: microaggressions and macroaggressions consume immense mental and emotional resources. Time that should be spent on personal pursuits is instead dedicated to processing and recovering from these encounters. My body and mind retain the memory, and the lingering effects demand a significant investment of time and energy to overcome.

This concept made me think of the 2011 movie In Time, where Justin Timberlake's character lives in a future where time is a currency. Each person has a visible, relentless countdown clock, on their forearm. Earning minutes through work, losing them through purchases, and facing immediate death when the clock reaches zero. I watched this film years ago as science fiction; now, I perceive it as a documentary. The wealthy reside in fancy enclaves known as New Greenwich, possessing centuries on their arms, effectively immortal through their accumulated time. They move slowly, deliberately - because they can afford to. They throw parties that last weeks. They sleep in. They linger. Meanwhile, those in the ghetto zones awaken with mere hours, sometimes minutes. They are perpetually in motion, not for exercise or enjoyment, because every second of stillness costs them something they cannot get back. The film's most poignant line is delivered early: "For a few to be immortal, many must die." The wealthy do not earn their centuries; they inherit them, safeguarding them behind barriers and  structures designed to make the poor run out of time faster. Does this sound familiar? What Timberlake's character, Will Salas, understands and what the film clearly shows, is that the lack of time for the poor is  manufactured. There is, in fact, plenty of time. The system just gathers it at the top, hides it behind exclusive gates, and calls this unfairness the natural order.

When I was younger, people repeatedly told me I would eventually end up with someone from the dominant caste because I loved museums, hiking, and spending time outdoors activities they casually described as "white." Those ignorant, racist comments used to make me angry. Today, I understand the deeper structure behind them. These activities are not inherently white; they have been coded as such because they require a resource that has historically been distributed unequally: time. In a capitalist society built through the extraction of Black and Brown labor, leisure has become racialized. Museums are coded as white. A leisurely Sunday brunch is coded as white. Even the simple act of lingering without explanation has been coded as white. This racial coding also explains why Black people engaging in ordinary, everyday activities are so often perceived as suspicious. Across the United States, Black people have had the police called on them for barbecuing in a public park, birdwatching, swimming, sleeping in a university common room, entering their own apartment buildings, or simply waiting for a friend in a coffee shop.

Examples include Amy Cooper ("Central Park Karen"), who threatened to call the police on Christian Cooper while he was birdwatching in 2020, and Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, who were arrested after a Starbucks employee called the police while they were waiting for a business meeting. Others have been confronted, arrested, or even killed while jogging, driving, or simply existing in spaces where leisure and ease are presumed to belong to someone else. The issue is not the activity itself, but the racialized assumptions attached to who is expected to occupy spaces of leisure. The coding reveals everything about who this system has historically granted enough time, safety, and unquestioned belonging to.

We reclaim significant power when we articulate this clearly. The exhaustion felt by BIPOC individuals the mental burden, the dual demands of labor and survival is engineered. Every hour we reclaim for ourselves, every unhurried meal, every long walk, and every afternoon free from the demands of productivity, becomes a quiet act of rebellion.

Noella initiated that conversation for me. I am now sharing it with you. Go out and claim your time this week and recognize that doing so is a radical act.

With love,

Kristina